A network node may be located in a data center, as well as in other networks such as an enterprise network, a campus network, etc. In communicating data, a network node is generally not power-proportional in that power consumed by the network node is not proportional to the amount of data transferred by the network node. For instance, a switch that has an active port may consume almost the same amount of power in keeping the port on regardless of how much data that the switch transfers.
Furthermore, switches waste power even if a port is not being used to communicate data. In many current switch models once a line-card is inserted into one of the plurality of slots located on the switch, the line-card immediately draws power. If the line-card has active or enabled ports, the ports also draw power. Even though all of the ports on the line-card are not enabled and may not have any cables hanging out of them, power is still consumed by the line-card. In conventional data centers, there may be many switches that have unused line-cards. These line-cards may have no cables plugged into the ports, or all the ports on the line-card may be explicitly disabled.
In many current switch models when all ports on a line-card are turned off, the power to the line-card is not automatically turned off, leading each unused line-card to consume upwards of 35 Watts. In a data center comprising a large number of switches this unnecessary power consumption results in wasted operational expenditure.